Toying with a new idea

[Swinkscalibur]

I've been pondering new ideas for unique mechanics to add to a new civ (I figure creating a unique civ is a good way to improve my modding skill) In the mean time an idea tumbled out of the jumble that was my brainstorming and I wanted to toss it around to everyone before I jump into what will surely be the somewhat intensive process of making it a reality.

I want to put the context in place. I was and am fond of the game Final Fantasy X in which one of the characters has an ability which allows her to combine random items for different effects in battle. This got me thinking about how I could adapt this for RifE. The entire scope of my idea is planned eventually as the central theme of a new civ (or perhaps a Dural+ mod). However the first phase of implementation can work as a smaller mod that can stand alone. Thus ...

A new World Wonder : ---- needs a good name ----

Description: ---- need a new character name ---- has created his/her master workshop of the culinary arts. A beautiful sprawling kitchen full of the bounty of the surrounding lands. Living units from far and wide can try their hand at cooking up some tasty treats or not...

Essentially the idea is to create an ingredient promotion for every food based resource. I came up with the following list (broken down into basic food categories):

• Grains - (Corn, Wheat, Rice)
• Plants - (Mushrooms, Bananas, Fruit Of Yggdrasil, Gulagarm)
• Land Meat - (Cow, Bison, Pig, Sheep, Horse, Nightmare, Camel, Deer, Arctic Deer)
• Sea Meat - (Toad, Clam, Shrimp, Fish, Crabs, Whale)
• Cooking Ingredients - (Salt, Sugar, Ale, Wine)

Units can pay a small to medium amount (depending on the ingredient) to take any number of these promotions (1 at a time). A unit can only use an ingredient corresponding to a bonus the unit's civ controls.

Nothing will happen with these promotions at all until the unit pays for the "Cook the Ingredients" promo. This promotion comes with a pyPerTurn function that immediately checks for other ingredient promos. Then checks the ingredients against a hidden "secret" (for anyone who doesn't cheat and look at the code) recipe list. Finally it removes all the ingredient promotions as well as the cooking promo and applies a promotion based on the resulting dish.

Some dishes will be utter duds. All successful dishes will have a duration effect. Most will be minor to moderate buffs. The strongest buffs will often result in negative after affects (through <promotionDegradesTo> or whatever that tag is)


So there it is. What do you think? I have two questions for those in the know. Can a promotion be specified as AI or Human only? (If so I would make the ingredients human only and allow the AI to directly buy the dishes - else teaching the AI would be impossible - how does the AI handle the Master Buildings?) Secondly, Valk can you create a new boolean tag for promotions <bIsIngredient> that is exposed to xml and python. This would significantly ease the programming to find the ingredients chosen.

Other ideas: I may also allow creating a successful dish to give all of the creating civs units an effect promotion "PROMOTION_DISH1_ISKNOWN" which allows the units to directly buy the promotion "PROMOTION_DISH1". Hopefully this would cut down on needless tedium (after all the fun part is the discovery) and perhaps these promotions can be given to the AI for free? That part I don't know about.



Edit: I don't know why I didn't think of this before. I will simply make the "Cook the Ingredients" an ability/spell with a cost as opposed to another promotion. Another promotion would be a bit more complex and for no good reason.

Edit2: In fact, in order to reduce clutter I will create a second spell to start the cooking process called "Create Dish." The spell will require the wonder and a living unit. For human players, casting this spell grants an effect promotion that allows taking ingredient promos and also casting "Cook the Ingredients", for the AI casting this spell does nothing. Also as soon as the wonder is built, python grants the "X_ISKNOWN" promotions to all the units of all the non-human players.

 

[dommain]

This could be modified for a gnome race that make unique armor and weapons, some useful and other are less. The weapons are soul infused to the wielder and cannot be dropped unless the original owner dies. There could be 3 levels of each combination (bad, decent and good) depending on luck and level of the unit creating the weapon.

I think you could mix strategic (copper, iron and mithral) resource with a food/happiness (grains, plants and seameat) resource. You could require a hero promotion or a 15 level requirement to mix a Element into the mix possibly giving it another possible bonus on the weapon.

 

[Swinkscalibur]

That is exactly what I was thinking as a part of the bigger plan.

The end idea is to make 3 new buildings:

• A "kitchen" for temporary boosts (requires some trial and error)
• A "forge/smithy" for permanent effects (small effects applied to entire segments of the army, like bronze/iron weapons) involves a unique "blacksmith" unit which is held, expensive to rebuild and must be protected. (Units just have to visit the blacksmith's city to gain the upgrades)
• A "magic shop" - allowing the mixing of magical ingredients for powerful results. (ranging from adding existing magic promotions to adept units for cost to world spell like effects) This building will be the real gamble as every mixture will have a chance of failure with negative consequences.

These buildings will become a base mechanic for either
a) a brand new civ to be fleshed out later in more detail - adding more flavor to this idea
b) a reworked Dural+ (they seem like the research and development type)

Right now I am leaning to option b) because I am not an artist and I don't know of enough unique art to create a whole new unique civ.

The biggest challenge I see is making sure I code everything so that the AI can at least have a chance to use some of these things. But it is mainly designed for human gameplay fun.

 

[Camper Joe]

This seems like an interesting mechanic, that very well could work out! Keep working on the idea! I also agree that this would be VERY difficult to code for AI.. But hey, I like conquering those gimped AI civs (i.e. Kahd)- Haha. Anyways, best of luck to you, Sir. Cheers.

-Joe

 

[Swinkscalibur]

Here is a refinement of the plan so far:

New World Wonder: "Festen's Laboratory" +4 , +1 cow resource. (Requires "Education")

Pedia: "Festen has created his master workshop of the culinary arts. A beautiful sprawling kitchen full of the bounty of the surrounding lands. Living creatures from far and wide can try their hand at cooking up some tasty treats or not..."

Living units standing in the city with Festen's Laboratory can
A) Cast the spell "Create Dish"
B) Purchase known Dishes which are available

(Dishes are known after they have been successfully created once in a game by a given civ, they are available if the bonuses required to create them are owned)



Casting "Create Dish" gives the casting unit an effect promotion allowing the unit to purchase any number of the following ingredient promotions if they are available (again if the corresponding bonuses are owned):

Spoiler :

Key: # Name of Ingredient - (required bonuses to use ingredient) (gold cost of ingredient)

	1. Water - (no requirements) (Free)
	2. Milk - (Cow) (Free)
	3. Oil - (Whale or Camel) (5 gold)
	4. Salt - (Salt) (2 gold)
	5. Sugar - (Sugar) (10 gold)
	6. Yeast - (Ale or Wine) (10 gold)
	7. Ale - (Ale) (8 gold)
	8. Wine - (Wine) (17 gold)
	9. Flour - (Wheat) (2 gold)
	10. Cornmeal - (Corn) (5 gold)
	11. Rice - (Rice) (5 gold)
	12. Meat - (Cow, Bison, Pig, Sheep, Horse, Camel, Deer, or Arctic Deer) (5 gold)
	13. Vegetables - (Corn and Mushrooms) (8 gold)
	14. Berries - (Gulagarm) (10 gold)
	15. Bananas - (Bananas) (8 gold)
	16. Exotic Fruit - (Fruit Of Yggdrasil) (30 gold)
	17. Mushrooms - (Mushrooms) (3 gold)
	18. Tainted Meat - (Nightmare or Toad) (10 gold)
	19. Seafood - (Clam, Shrimp, Fish, Crabs, Whale) (8 gold)

Once an ingredient promotion is purchased, the unit has access to the spell "Combine Ingredients"

The spell
1. Checks all ingredient promotions against "Recipe" list
2. Removes all ingredient promotions
3. Adds the correct "Dish" promotion to the casting unit
4. Adds the correct "Dish_known" promotion to the living units of the casting unit's civ


Here is a list of the Dishes I have come up with so far, along with their effects:

Spoiler :

• Failed Dish - Effect: 5 turn duration, unable to cast "Create Dish"
• Water - Effect: 1 turn duration, +5% heal rate
• Jerky - Effect: 4 turn duration, +15% strength
• Ih'sus - Effect: 5 turn duration, + 1 first strike
• Pot Roast - Effect: 10 turn duration, +1 strength, +20% strength
• Fried Rice - Effect: 5 turn effect, +8 gold from combat victory
• Banana Tart - Effect: 5 turn duration, +2 ranged attack, +10% ranged cap, +1 operational range
• Cursed Tart - Effect: 5 turn duration, same effect as "wicked", degrades to "cursed"
• Grog - Effect: same effect as "Sidequest" but half the experience
• Banana Beer - Effect: 3 turn effect, +1 banana affinity
• Seafood Flan - Effect: 7 turn duration, amphibious effect, +1 cold damage
• Comfort Flan - Effect: 9 turn duration, +10% heal rate (friendly, neutral and enemy), + 20% strength
• Yggdrasil Brew - Effect: 4 turn duration, unit provides +1 in city
• Twisted Flan - Effect: 9 turn duration, +1 movement, +1 first strike, +2 first strike chances, immune to first strikes, blitz effect, degrades to "crazed"
• Elixer - Effect: 10 turn duration, +20% heal rate, can heal while moving
• Tainted Elixer - Effect: 10 turn duration, +25% heal rate, cannibalize effect, can heal while moving, degrades to "withered"

There will be far more recipes coming. If you have an idea for a recipe please post the name of the recipe as well as the effect. Do NOT post the actual ingredients, please PM them to me.

Feel free to let me know what you think so far.

 

[sylvain5477]

Interesting idea.

 

[Rapier]

I feel a bit dubious about this idea as currently proposed.

Mainly because it sounds like a rather complicated mechanic that requires getting lucky with the resources you have access too.

Typically for example I tend to get access to only one of the resources in each of your types. Do you intend access to one to be enough? (for example will corn be enough for me to get everything off the grains type of resource).

The basic premise sounds fun but I'm not sure if it'll work in practice.

Possibly you should give them access to a a way of changing resources (for example, I have 2 corns, I can turn one corn into a wheat with sufficient tech/cost - maybe a permement -1 food on the square for over-farming or what have you).

Also - typically this would be a halfling rather than Gnome type origin, as halflings are stereotypically the ones that like food. (DnD, LOTR, Warhammer, Homm).

Gnomes tend to be stoneworkers, illusionists, engineers, rather than cooks.

Also paying in gold for all the promos may be quite limiting to this mechanic, it might be worth considering alternative ways of paying (say, all the boosts have + and - traits for a unit, but are free because of it).

 

[Swinkscalibur]

I feel a bit dubious about this idea as currently proposed.

Mainly because it sounds like a rather complicated mechanic that requires getting lucky with the resources you have access too.

Typically for example I tend to get access to only one of the resources in each of your types. Do you intend access to one to be enough? (for example will corn be enough for me to get everything off the grains type of resource).

The basic premise sounds fun but I'm not sure if it'll work in practice.

Possibly you should give them access to a a way of changing resources (for example, I have 2 corns, I can turn one corn into a wheat with sufficient tech/cost - maybe a permement -1 food on the square for over-farming or what have you).

Also - typically this would be a halfling rather than Gnome type origin, as halflings are stereotypically the ones that like food. (DnD, LOTR, Warhammer, Homm).

Gnomes tend to be stoneworkers, illusionists, engineers, rather than cooks.

Also paying in gold for all the promos may be quite limiting to this mechanic, it might be worth considering alternative ways of paying (say, all the boosts have + and - traits for a unit, but are free because of it).

Maybe you missed my revision. I decided to change my ingredients and also the required bonuses. Originally the ingredients were the bonuses themselves now they are as follows:

Spoiler :

1. Water - (no requirements) (Free)
2. Milk - (Cow) (Free)
3. Oil - (Whale or Camel) (5 gold)
4. Salt - (Salt) (2 gold)
5. Sugar - (Sugar) (10 gold)
6. Yeast - (Ale or Wine) (10 gold)
7. Ale - (Ale) (8 gold)
8. Wine - (Wine) (17 gold)
9. Flour - (Wheat) (2 gold)
10. Cornmeal - (Corn) (5 gold)
11. Rice - (Rice) (5 gold)
12. Meat - (Cow, Bison, Pig, Sheep, Horse, Camel, Deer, or Arctic Deer) (5 gold)
13. Vegetables - (Corn and Mushrooms) (8 gold)
14. Berries - (Gulagarm) (10 gold)
15. Bananas - (Bananas) (8 gold)
16. Exotic Fruit - (Fruit Of Yggdrasil) (30 gold)
17. Mushrooms - (Mushrooms) (3 gold)
18. Tainted Meat - (Nightmare or Toad) (10 gold)
19. Seafood - (Clam, Shrimp, Fish, Crabs, or Whale) (8 gold)

So this should provide a good selection of ingredients to all civs without a great deal of effort put in. A bit of effort should lead to most of the ingredients being available.

Part of the mechanic is the mystery of it. The fun of guessing, finding success and failure, discovery. What I want to avoid is tediousness (that's why a given recipe need only be discovered once to make a dish available). The cost should not be prohibitive. So far none of the recipes is over 100 gold. Some of the items are actually quite powerful for the relative cost. Albeit they have a duration, but used correctly they could be quite strong. The idea was an initial investment of gold into a research and development project allows the potential for a corresponding increase in strength.

Finally the more I think on this (and after a few comments from Valk) I am now leaning towards incorporating my whole plan into the Dural civ as a Dural+ sort of thing.